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> Want to do something about climate change? Start with yourself I really dislike this line of thinking. I don’t manufacture millions of tons of concrete or mi

> Want to do something about climate change? Start with yourself I really dislike this line of thinking. I don’t manufacture millions of tons of concrete or millions of single-use plastic shampoo bottles. Our current path is irreversible if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon.

slg 7y ago
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible" ~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec Sure, you won't be able to make a measurable impact by yourself. However your mindset quickly leads to a tragedy of the commons type response that leaves us all in trouble. We should all take a more proactive approach to this in both our private life and in our professional work.
- eat_veggies 7y ago
  tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation, not by hoping that individuals or corporations will discipline themselves
  - slg 7y ago
    I agree. We need regulations to change and that includes both taxes and subsidies which are the main topics of the article and the top comment respectively. But in order to change those things, we need political will and that political will comes from self discipline.
  - colordrops 7y ago
    Who writes and enactsn the regulation?
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Any regulation on corporate behavior is ultimately just a proxy for regulation on individuals (because it's often easier to regulate corporations, as they tend to be more accountable). Corporations will discipline themselves if the demand for their product goes away.
  - radicalbyte 7y ago
    That's clearly true. Otherwise, why would the fossil fuel and related industries be spending so much money fighting any attempts to put a price on carbon or otherwise regulate it?
  - nybble41 7y ago
    > tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation Tragedy of the commons is caused by regulation. That's how you get commons in the first place—resources that everyone is allowed to use but no one has any investment in. It's solved by allowing the commons to be homesteaded and converted to private ownership.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  This is an excellent analogy given that snowflakes don't exactly have any agency over whether they end up in an avalanche, and removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop.
  - slg 7y ago
    > removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop. That is exactly the point of the analogy. One single snowflake doesn't prevent the avalanche and therefore one single snowflake is not to blame. However if enough snowflakes are removed the avalanche is stopped. Similarly no single person is going to fix climate change. The only way we see results is if enough people band together to make changes.
    - aisengard 7y ago
      And historically the best way for people to band together to collectively do the same thing is via government action. Far more important to do activism and press the government to solve it than to inconvenience yourself and think "Well, I did my part, now everyone should do the same".
TacticalTable 7y ago
It's like this on most issues on HN. Some of them benefit from a larger following (Animal cruelty, politics in your community), while others will simply be useless without government involvement to shut down the offenders. The only thing an individual is really accomplishing by avoiding flights in most cases is inconveniencing themselves and assuaging their conscious. Change needs to come from the top here, or nothing meaningful will get done.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices, or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy? The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.
- OisinMoran 7y ago
  If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?
  - pathseeker 7y ago
    individuals and government. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum.
    - ixtli 7y ago
      Corporations dictate consumer behavior in the ways that matter here. Do you think individuals agitated for the rise of throw-away goods during the rise of mass produced plastics in the 60s? This was the simply the most companies could do in the production process to maximize profit in a way that wouldn't stop customers from buying. Also, nothing will change until people stop imagining that corporations and government are foreign bodies comprised of something other than their neighbors and themselves.
    - slg 7y ago
      It is weird how people pretend that corporations and governments are some type of weird entities with minds of their own instead of just a group of individuals. Individuals changing priorities will directly result in corporations and governments changing priorities.
      - moate 7y ago
        But the inverse is also strongly true. It's why people decry the "nanny-state". The government and corporations can make decisions that result in changes in individual behavior. Many times, it's easier to get 51 senators (or whatever) to agree on pushing policy than mobilizing millions of consumers on the same issue. Part of the advantage of a representative government is that it's a smaller group of people to arrive at a consensus. Societal changes are always about some group reaching a consensus on a topic and collectively acting on their decision. Governments and Corporations can sometimes be easier to deal with than 300+ million individuals when it comes to driving that consensus.
hak8or 7y ago
But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. It is us who continue to buy gas guzzlers and wanting to live grossly inefficient lifestyles via living in suburbia, combined with us voting against mass transit. It is also us who vote in people who do not care about climate change. Ultimately, we are the ones who are willingly giving money to these companies. We simply don't seem to care on a grand scale because there continues to be high demand for inefficient goods. We are voting with our dollars.
- DeepYogurt 7y ago
  > But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. If only we could collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.
  - ericd 7y ago
    I agree, I think a carbon tax that puts a price on the damage people do day to day with their behavior is the only thing that’s going to work on a meaningful scale. The needed changes are too painful to make without pushing hard on peoples’ wallets.
    - zjaffee 7y ago
      Carbon taxes end up being a regressive tax on the poor (not entirely, but marginally), especially given that poorer folks are often forced to commute longer distances and live in less well insulated and modernized homes. An approach that focuses on decreasing the price of clean technology, rather than one that just raises the price of dirtier tech and assumes later rebalancing would be a much more effective approach, with possibly still having carbon taxes for corporations, but not individuals.
      - ericd 7y ago
        It doesn't have to just be a tax, the government could make it revenue neutral and use the revenue to provide an offsetting subsidy for cleaner tech.
gambiting 7y ago
There's two things to this. Yes, we shouldn't be buying shampoo in the disposable plastic containers - but corporations shouldn't be able to manufacture them in the first place.
- pjc50 7y ago
  So .. what should we be buying shampoo in? Not glass in the shower? Non-recyclable tetra pack?
  - mac01021 7y ago
    I don't buy shampoo. My shower contains a single bar of soap.
  - zjaffee 7y ago
    Ideally bringing the old bottle somewhere to get it refilled.
    - makapuf 7y ago
      Yes a nice strong plastic bottle of shampoo that you keep. Wont have branding however or whatever the packaging is supposed to convey for this brand. It will be your own choice of color or look.
  - makerofspoons 7y ago
    Here in Denver there is a shop where I can buy a reusable glass bottle that they will refill for me when I bring it back to buy more (soap, shampoo, detergent, etc). Perhaps supermarkets could transition to this model for everything.
  - dorfsmay 7y ago
    Soap bars?
  - triceratops 7y ago
    Is it not possible to manufacture shampoo in solid form? Like a bar of soap?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
perfunctory 7y ago
> if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon. Now the question is how to achieve the drastic shift. The popular opinion is that we need to vote in the right politicians and the change should come from the top. I used to think this way for a long time. I've changed my opinion recently. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these changes have come from the top. None were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion, direct action and civil disobedience.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Indeed, politicians are quite cowardly. Even the "progressive" ones won't move forward until the majority has.
- eyko 7y ago
  Completely agree. To that I add catastrophes, because most environmental acts (e.g. the air pollution control act in the USA or the watershed act in the UK, both in the 50s) came about in part because of previous environmental disasters or dangers we were not careful enough to prevent, and only after tragic incidents did the politicians decide they had to push for these types of acts. The other tool we have in our toolbox nowadays is consumerism. We can choose what to buy, so if there are alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and that are gaining momentum because of our shifting ethical and moral values, every other opportunist will want to, at the very least, not miss out on an opportunity. This is why I support extinction rebellion even though I find them quite annoying. It brings an issue into the mainstream conversation which will hopefully change our attitudes towards excessive consumerism.
- avip 7y ago
  Another point I find relevant is all your examples involved a non-trivial (possibly overwhelming for this crowd) use of violence (which I think you somewhat understated as civil disobedience). So... do we have the stamina to ramp up our "protest" into something mildly violent?
  - 7y ago
gingabriska 7y ago
And if you did you would probably be chasing and optimizing for your quarterly revenue goals and using every dirty trick in the book to get ahead.
ixtli 7y ago
Exactly. I've done no research on the company but I assume Graham is profiting off of its success. Since only collective action will solve climate change's effects on the middle and lower classes this is just cynical profiteering off of global disasters.
hayd 7y ago
"Start with yourself" And this doesn't address that, it just attempts to price the poor out of flying... Awesome stuff. This will have zero impact on the affluent, we'll continue to fly whenever and wherever we want.
- isostatic 7y ago
  And the amount of money raised can then be spent on cleaning up the externalities.
  - hayd 7y ago
    I am very uncomfortable pricing the poor out of things. That's the fundamental issue with sin taxes like this.
    - isostatic 7y ago
      If you want to help the poor then redistribute wealth, don’t allow people to destroy the planet. A carbon tax could be used for a UBI, or for electric car subsidies, or for negative income tax
jokoon 7y ago
You're right, but the more people are able to make good choices, the more politicians will be able to put pressure on companies who make money on carbon emissions. Politicians can't do anything unless consumers really show they're able to change. Climate change is a problem of consumption and how economies are completely dependent on carbon emissions. You just cannot realistically forbid this and this without hurting the economy and its existing carbon-dependent infrastructure. Climate change will be fought on campaigning on consumers so that they call on their good will and shift markets. I guess the only reliable way to make consumers change their choice is fear mongering about climate change. We need more climate change hard-scifi. If consumers act like lazy sedentary irresponsible kids, the only way will be to instate hard measures: banning personal cars and adding more organized public transport, switching to reusable glass and steel packaging, reducing bullshit jobs to avoid useless transportation, economies of scale to avoid emissions, a big nuclear energy plan, etc. To be honest all those things should already be startups. They're not complicated. It's a matter of law and how salesmen are pushing consumers to make bad choices.

slg 7y ago

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible" ~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec Sure, you won't be able to make a measurable impact by yourself. However your mindset quickly leads to a tragedy of the commons type response that leaves us all in trouble. We should all take a more proactive approach to this in both our private life and in our professional work.

eat_veggies 7y ago
tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation, not by hoping that individuals or corporations will discipline themselves
- slg 7y ago
  I agree. We need regulations to change and that includes both taxes and subsidies which are the main topics of the article and the top comment respectively. But in order to change those things, we need political will and that political will comes from self discipline.
- colordrops 7y ago
  Who writes and enactsn the regulation?
- tathougies 7y ago
  Any regulation on corporate behavior is ultimately just a proxy for regulation on individuals (because it's often easier to regulate corporations, as they tend to be more accountable). Corporations will discipline themselves if the demand for their product goes away.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  That's clearly true. Otherwise, why would the fossil fuel and related industries be spending so much money fighting any attempts to put a price on carbon or otherwise regulate it?
- nybble41 7y ago
  > tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation Tragedy of the commons is caused by regulation. That's how you get commons in the first place—resources that everyone is allowed to use but no one has any investment in. It's solved by allowing the commons to be homesteaded and converted to private ownership.
scrollaway 7y ago
This is an excellent analogy given that snowflakes don't exactly have any agency over whether they end up in an avalanche, and removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop.
- slg 7y ago
  > removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop. That is exactly the point of the analogy. One single snowflake doesn't prevent the avalanche and therefore one single snowflake is not to blame. However if enough snowflakes are removed the avalanche is stopped. Similarly no single person is going to fix climate change. The only way we see results is if enough people band together to make changes.
  - aisengard 7y ago
    And historically the best way for people to band together to collectively do the same thing is via government action. Far more important to do activism and press the government to solve it than to inconvenience yourself and think "Well, I did my part, now everyone should do the same".

TacticalTable 7y ago

It's like this on most issues on HN. Some of them benefit from a larger following (Animal cruelty, politics in your community), while others will simply be useless without government involvement to shut down the offenders. The only thing an individual is really accomplishing by avoiding flights in most cases is inconveniencing themselves and assuaging their conscious. Change needs to come from the top here, or nothing meaningful will get done.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices, or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy? The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.

OisinMoran 7y ago
If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?
- pathseeker 7y ago
  individuals and government. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum.
  - ixtli 7y ago
    Corporations dictate consumer behavior in the ways that matter here. Do you think individuals agitated for the rise of throw-away goods during the rise of mass produced plastics in the 60s? This was the simply the most companies could do in the production process to maximize profit in a way that wouldn't stop customers from buying. Also, nothing will change until people stop imagining that corporations and government are foreign bodies comprised of something other than their neighbors and themselves.
  - slg 7y ago
    It is weird how people pretend that corporations and governments are some type of weird entities with minds of their own instead of just a group of individuals. Individuals changing priorities will directly result in corporations and governments changing priorities.
    - moate 7y ago
      But the inverse is also strongly true. It's why people decry the "nanny-state". The government and corporations can make decisions that result in changes in individual behavior. Many times, it's easier to get 51 senators (or whatever) to agree on pushing policy than mobilizing millions of consumers on the same issue. Part of the advantage of a representative government is that it's a smaller group of people to arrive at a consensus. Societal changes are always about some group reaching a consensus on a topic and collectively acting on their decision. Governments and Corporations can sometimes be easier to deal with than 300+ million individuals when it comes to driving that consensus.

hak8or 7y ago

But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. It is us who continue to buy gas guzzlers and wanting to live grossly inefficient lifestyles via living in suburbia, combined with us voting against mass transit. It is also us who vote in people who do not care about climate change. Ultimately, we are the ones who are willingly giving money to these companies. We simply don't seem to care on a grand scale because there continues to be high demand for inefficient goods. We are voting with our dollars.

DeepYogurt 7y ago
> But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. If only we could collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.
- ericd 7y ago
  I agree, I think a carbon tax that puts a price on the damage people do day to day with their behavior is the only thing that’s going to work on a meaningful scale. The needed changes are too painful to make without pushing hard on peoples’ wallets.
  - zjaffee 7y ago
    Carbon taxes end up being a regressive tax on the poor (not entirely, but marginally), especially given that poorer folks are often forced to commute longer distances and live in less well insulated and modernized homes. An approach that focuses on decreasing the price of clean technology, rather than one that just raises the price of dirtier tech and assumes later rebalancing would be a much more effective approach, with possibly still having carbon taxes for corporations, but not individuals.
    - ericd 7y ago
      It doesn't have to just be a tax, the government could make it revenue neutral and use the revenue to provide an offsetting subsidy for cleaner tech.

gambiting 7y ago

There's two things to this. Yes, we shouldn't be buying shampoo in the disposable plastic containers - but corporations shouldn't be able to manufacture them in the first place.

pjc50 7y ago
So .. what should we be buying shampoo in? Not glass in the shower? Non-recyclable tetra pack?
- mac01021 7y ago
  I don't buy shampoo. My shower contains a single bar of soap.
- zjaffee 7y ago
  Ideally bringing the old bottle somewhere to get it refilled.
  - makapuf 7y ago
    Yes a nice strong plastic bottle of shampoo that you keep. Wont have branding however or whatever the packaging is supposed to convey for this brand. It will be your own choice of color or look.
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  Here in Denver there is a shop where I can buy a reusable glass bottle that they will refill for me when I bring it back to buy more (soap, shampoo, detergent, etc). Perhaps supermarkets could transition to this model for everything.
- dorfsmay 7y ago
  Soap bars?
- triceratops 7y ago
  Is it not possible to manufacture shampoo in solid form? Like a bar of soap?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

perfunctory 7y ago

> if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon. Now the question is how to achieve the drastic shift. The popular opinion is that we need to vote in the right politicians and the change should come from the top. I used to think this way for a long time. I've changed my opinion recently. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these changes have come from the top. None were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion, direct action and civil disobedience.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
Indeed, politicians are quite cowardly. Even the "progressive" ones won't move forward until the majority has.
eyko 7y ago
Completely agree. To that I add catastrophes, because most environmental acts (e.g. the air pollution control act in the USA or the watershed act in the UK, both in the 50s) came about in part because of previous environmental disasters or dangers we were not careful enough to prevent, and only after tragic incidents did the politicians decide they had to push for these types of acts. The other tool we have in our toolbox nowadays is consumerism. We can choose what to buy, so if there are alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and that are gaining momentum because of our shifting ethical and moral values, every other opportunist will want to, at the very least, not miss out on an opportunity. This is why I support extinction rebellion even though I find them quite annoying. It brings an issue into the mainstream conversation which will hopefully change our attitudes towards excessive consumerism.
avip 7y ago
Another point I find relevant is all your examples involved a non-trivial (possibly overwhelming for this crowd) use of violence (which I think you somewhat understated as civil disobedience). So... do we have the stamina to ramp up our "protest" into something mildly violent?
- 7y ago

gingabriska 7y ago

And if you did you would probably be chasing and optimizing for your quarterly revenue goals and using every dirty trick in the book to get ahead.

ixtli 7y ago

Exactly. I've done no research on the company but I assume Graham is profiting off of its success. Since only collective action will solve climate change's effects on the middle and lower classes this is just cynical profiteering off of global disasters.

hayd 7y ago

"Start with yourself" And this doesn't address that, it just attempts to price the poor out of flying... Awesome stuff. This will have zero impact on the affluent, we'll continue to fly whenever and wherever we want.

isostatic 7y ago
And the amount of money raised can then be spent on cleaning up the externalities.
- hayd 7y ago
  I am very uncomfortable pricing the poor out of things. That's the fundamental issue with sin taxes like this.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    If you want to help the poor then redistribute wealth, don’t allow people to destroy the planet. A carbon tax could be used for a UBI, or for electric car subsidies, or for negative income tax

jokoon 7y ago

You're right, but the more people are able to make good choices, the more politicians will be able to put pressure on companies who make money on carbon emissions. Politicians can't do anything unless consumers really show they're able to change. Climate change is a problem of consumption and how economies are completely dependent on carbon emissions. You just cannot realistically forbid this and this without hurting the economy and its existing carbon-dependent infrastructure. Climate change will be fought on campaigning on consumers so that they call on their good will and shift markets. I guess the only reliable way to make consumers change their choice is fear mongering about climate change. We need more climate change hard-scifi. If consumers act like lazy sedentary irresponsible kids, the only way will be to instate hard measures: banning personal cars and adding more organized public transport, switching to reusable glass and steel packaging, reducing bullshit jobs to avoid useless transportation, economies of scale to avoid emissions, a big nuclear energy plan, etc. To be honest all those things should already be startups. They're not complicated. It's a matter of law and how salesmen are pushing consumers to make bad choices.